Friday, July 23, 2010

Our first stop on our east coast vacation was Montreal. And to be honest we wish we could have spent much more time there. Montreal is by far and away Ariel and my #2 favorite city right after Portland. If it weren't for the harsh winters It'd be too close to call.

We at at a cafe called Cagibi which had one of the biggest zine collections I've ever seen. It also had a copy of Zine Arcade #1 which I had a small comic strip in.

There was also a small mini comic by Marc Bell and Owen Plummer that I enjoyed finding.

The cafe and stack of zines also appeared as background in the film Les Amoures imaginaires which we saw and recommend.

In Montreal the best way to get around are the bixi bikes which you can rent for 5$ for 24 hours. Each trip you take you have 30 minutes to return the bike to one of a bazillion bike stations. There are bike stations on almost every two blocks. The weather was great and so was the biking even when we got soaked by a surprise rainstorm.

We went to the Drawn and Quarterly store where I picked up a copy of Dave Kiersh's Xeric book, Dirtbags- Mallchicks and Motorbikes. We also met the friendly Rory who invited us out to a show that night. This is Ariel's rendering of Rory and the store.

We ended up taking the Greyhound to Burlington VT where we rented a car and drove through White River Jct. where the Center for Cartoon Studies is located. Alec Longstreth was gracious enough to say hi even though he was in the middle of teaching a summer workshop. Robyn Chapman gave us a tour of the school along with the Charles Schultz Library where Chuck Forsman was working. We picked up copy of his newest issue of Snakeoil called WOLF along with his girlfriend Melissa Mendes's book Freddy. Both books were great of course. That's Robyn and Chuck.

We then went to New York.

We did a lot in NY but we were both grumpy because of the heat and how long we had to spend transferring trains in the subway. We did eat some amazing food of course and here is the best vegan crepe I've ever had courtesy of Atlas Cafe.

We also saw a great flick called Alamar at the Film Forum which helped us escape the midday heat and suffocation of people everywhere.

My fourth trip to New York and I finally got to go to the MET. I think Tim Burton stole a lot from the African and Polynesian exhibitions. This strange statue is from New Caledonia. I finally know where that is.

This drawing Ariel made pretty much sums up our thoughts on New York this time out.

One of the best parts of our trip was staying out in Chester New Jersey where the trees outnumber the people 10000 to 1. We then drove back to Maplewood to visit my super cool publisher, Blue Apple Books. Their offices were so inspiring. I wish I had taken more pictures to show you. This is a display they made for the Balloon Toon series The Super Crazy Cat Dance is in.

We spent a day in Baltimore where we saw Inception (which was pretty good) and I got to acquire some issues of Blammo and Derf's Punk Rock and Trailer Parks at Atomic Books. The center book is actually a Yuichi Yokoyama book that I found at the Kinokuniya bookstore in NY. I'm nore sure if Picturebox has any plans for publishing it but they should. You actually don't need it translated because the only words are sound effects.

Thursday, July 1, 2010

Click on the link to the right if you'd like to pre-order copies from Chronicle Books. You can also get it from Amazon with a big discount. But you know what that discount means to your local bookstore. So better yet, you should pre-order it with your local bookstore instead.